Hey ,
It's autumn: the weather is cooling off, and it's been raining.
Which means it's mushroom time.
One of my colleagues has talked about wanting to go and pick some mushrooms. Then at the weekend, I noticed some people who were about to go mushroom picking.
The trouble is knowing which mushrooms to pick!
That wasn't a problem when I was young. We only picked and ate field mushrooms, your regular mushroom that (duh!) you find in fields. We had a few fields, so there was usually a good number of mushrooms.
We'd head out with a bucket (1) or two and see what we could find. Some years we'd pick heaps of mushrooms. Other years, not so many. It depended on the weather: how quickly it got cold and how much rain there had been. It also depended on us. Sometimes we just weren't interested in walking around, looking for mushrooms.
The second place we lived was next to a forest of pine trees (2). In the forest, we saw some other types of mushrooms. However, we didn't eat them. We thought they were all poisonous.
One of the mushrooms in the forest had a bright red cap (3) with white spots and grew on the ground. We were sure that one was poisonous, although I don't think we ever checked in a book or anything; however, there were a couple of others that weren't red.
A few years later, we became friends with an old Latvian couple (4). One day, they invited us for a meal. We ate the food the lady had prepared. It was delicious - she was a great cook!
There were some mushrooms in the food, and she told us about going out and picking them. She said she'd found them in the pine forest.
Had we just eaten poisonous mushrooms?
She seemed very sure, telling us they were exactly like the ones she picked in Latvia. We didn't get sick, so she must have known what she was doing. But it was definitely freaky!
Do you eat mushrooms, ? What type is your favourite: regular field mushrooms or another type? Have you ever been mushroom picking?
Until next time,
Andrea
(1) a bucket - a container made from metal or plastic, with a handle. You can use it to carry liquids (like water or milk), or other things
(2) pine trees - the big family of trees with needles, not leaves
(3) cap (of a mushroom) - the top part, the bit that sits on top of the stem of the mushroom
(4) a Latvian couple - a married man and women (a couple), who came from Latvia (one of the little countries that was part of the USSR).
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